A cycle lane for a very small bicycle. Photograph: Warrington Cycle Campaign

One of my favourite ever bits of graffiti was on the wall of a public library. The building had steps up to the entrance and then, to the side, a wheelchair ramp. But then, beside that, was this short length of iron railing that emerged at an angle from the wall and then zigzagged back into it. Perhaps it was supposed to protect pedestrians from runaway wheelchairs. Or provide a handy outside tethering place for dog-owners who wanted to borrow a book. Who knows? It was a truly baffling piece of street furniture. So the graffiti asked, wonderfully apropos and very simply: "What is this?"

The railings, and the words on the wall, have long gone. Perhaps, finally, the council was embarrassed into answering the question in its own taciturn way by removing both. But the "what is this?" spirit lives on. And nowhere is it more alive than in Warrington.

Warrington is where it's at - especially in cycling circles, because the local cycling campaign there has established something of a cult following for the regular photo feature on its website: "Facility of the Month".

It's a richly sardonic archive of some of the most spectacular cycle-lane nonsenses ever perpetrated by well-meaning but ham-fisted councils. We have lanes that go right through bus stops, beautifully surfaced lanes blocked by telephone boxes, routes that run not for miles but for just a few feet, routes helpfully shoehorned in between parking places mere yards apart, and a whole variety of arbitrary, unscheduled endings with lampposts, bushes, fences and crash barriers.

Go and look - it's worth a few good giggles. Or it would be if some of them weren't downright dangerous, and if the sheer folly of it all didn't make you want to weep with frustration. And there is a serious downside. There are still plenty of councillors up and down the land who bear a grudge about what they see as a case of public money being squandered on an irritating special interest group: that is, cyclists.

It is not difficult to detect their resentment of what they see as politically correct pandering in the contemptuous tokenism of these lanes. You have to ask yourself whose interests are served by installing routes so badly designed and poorly engineered that cyclists go miles to avoid them: what better way to block future funding than to be able to say, "Well, we tried this, but nobody uses them, so what's the point?"

But cyclists are finding a way forward, despite all the dead-ends and pointless diversions put in their path. To a great extent, what we see courtesy of the Warrington cycle campaign is a hangover from the past. In many areas, the "road to nowhere" bike lane belongs to the bad old days. Heroic biking groups such as Sustrans and the Cyclists Touring Club (CTC) have invested masses of time and money in re-educating traffic engineers and helping local authority transport officers establish "best practice" guidelines. Transport for London, championing its own Cycling Centre of Excellence, publishes a fat folder of cycling design standards for every kind of bike facility you can imagine. So there's no excuse any more for installing potential facilities of the month.

The whole philosophy has shifted. The mindset behind many older bike routes is typified by the sort of lane that offers you a route up on the pavement, perhaps at a pinch-point in the road, only to dump you back into the traffic 100 yards later. Clearly, this wasn't for the cyclists' safety or convenience - it was about getting you out of the way of the motorists. But priorities have changed, and the car is king no more.

The problem is that the joke facilities are still with us, like a hangover that won't go, presumably because of a lazy "Oh well, it's better than nothing" view on the part of local authorities.

Actually, no - it's worse than nothing. And here's why: if the proposed new version of the Highway Code becomes statutory, then cyclists who have accidents in the road could find themselves in court being told that their decision avoid a cycle facility, no matter how badly designed, was "contributory negligence". That's right: from a legal point of view, you would be better riding in the pavement lane that carries you into a hedge than on the public highway next to it. The CTC is conducting a vigorous campaign to amend this new wording of the code (and you can sign up at www.ctc.org.uk). One thing we should know by now is that it doesn't pay cyclists to be complacent about the wisdom of our legislators and elected officials. After all, look what we get when they try to do something nice for us.